


i am the fire and i am the forest and i am a witness

by desolateskies



Series: you can have little a fear (as a threat) [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, canon-typical gay yearning, heavy-handed fire metaphors straight from the mediocre poet herself, it was supposed to be fun but suddenly it wasn't, some cult members fall in love with their jesus-analog to COPE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23265775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desolateskies/pseuds/desolateskies
Summary: Jude Perry is more human than she wants to admit. And suddenly, she isn't.
Relationships: Agnes Montague/Jude Perry
Series: you can have little a fear (as a threat) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672927
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	i am the fire and i am the forest and i am a witness

**Author's Note:**

> (title from mitski's "a burning hill" because i'm a melancholy bi)

Agnes Montague had hair like flame, rich and bright and beautiful. Each strand was a silk-thin approximation of the fire that lived inside of her, searing flame that hazed the air around her. When the Desolation was feasting, her hair went blue-hot, bleeding enough heat to melt nearby supplicants into no more than runny wax. When Agnes wanted to play at normalcy and roam the streets of London, it dulled to an ephemeral auburn. The molten heart of the Desolation could only lie cold for so long, no matter how desperately Agnes wanted to be human. 

The Lightless Flame was a god of absolutes, and the cult had tried to ward Agnes from friends or lovers time and time again. She was only to have followers. Despite having to indulge her occasional rebellion, it wasn’t hard to follow Agnes—to worship her. She was captivating in every way. Jude had run her fingers over plenty of charred skeletons, awed by the blue-haired angel that’d snuffed out their dreams without a second thought. After those successful nights of broiling optimists alive, Jude let Agnes lay her fine-boned cheek on her thigh, carding fingers through auburn hair and quietly enjoying the exquisite pain of Agnes’ tears carving through her leg. Even at her coolest, Agnes melted through wax-flesh and wax-bone with ease, and Jude would endure fiery agony a thousand times for a moment of Agnes’ smile. That smile grew rarer and rarer, however, disappearing almost entirely when they hunted together, when the Desolation shone through her in its truest form. Those nights, Jude wasn’t sure which one she was so willingly to suffer for.

Social calls were rare among those devoted to the Lightless Flame, so Jude knew that something was wrong the moment she found Agnes in her flat.

“Missing me already? We just saw each other last week,” Jude teased, hiding her startled wariness behind a cocksure veneer. She leaned against the scorched doorframe to her bedroom, raising an eyebrow at the sight of Agnes in her empty living room. The woman looked absurdly normal, absurdly human, even dressed in a thick coat and tightly-wrapped scarf to counter the winter chill. Jude hadn’t felt cold in decades.

“I suppose so,” came the simple reply. Agnes’ eyes met Jude’s, luminous amber trapping the fluttering fly wings of her heart in place. She glided across the room with unnatural grace, resting a hand on Jude’s cheek and cradling her face with uncharacteristic gentleness.

“Agnes…” Something was off, but Jude couldn’t bring herself to break the point of contact. It took her a moment to realize that Agnes’ hand was cool against her cheek. 

“Jude,” she murmured again, nearly soundless in the closing gap between their lips. 

Even the kiss felt off. Usually, Agnes burned hot, leaving Jude helpless as a moth and yielding as paraffin to her flame. This time, they were just two people with none of the trappings of worship, yet something hot and violent and good still flared to life in Jude’s chest. Despite the strangeness, she couldn’t bring herself to pull away, as if strands of invisible string tied her to Agnes. Against Jude’s better judgement, she pulled Agnes still-closer, feeling the smooth weave of a complicated plait against her fingers.

“I haven’t seen you with your hair up since we first met,” she said, breathless, “it looks good.” 

The compliment was out of place in Jude’s rough voice, but Agnes had heard hundreds of her imperfect compliments before. She buried her face into the crook of Agnes’ shoulder. Briefly, Jude was overwhelmed by the smoky sweetness of a freshly-struck match, but it was…smothered somehow, as if by an imperceptible layer of dust. Then Agnes’ hands were on either side of her face, bringing them nose to nose, and Jude futilely tried to remember why she’d been so adverse to her presence in the first place.

Agnes smiled like they were sharing a secret, an underhanded smile that didn’t fit quite right on her beautiful, expressive face. “I know.”  


\---

The next day, Jude paid Agnes a surprise visit in turn. She shoved open the door to the familiar flat and paused in the doorway. The darkened interior felt foreign, unlit by the rows of candles that lined the walls. Despite its name, the Lightless Flame disliked darkness. Things slunk in the darkness, secret things that hid from pain itself. The only light in the flat streamed from the crack beneath Agnes’ bedroom door, and Jude headed towards it, footsteps quiet on rivers of dried wax.

The door swung open with a series of discordant plinks, like strings snapping on a faraway instrument. Agnes was sat facing the door, a child that couldn’t have been older than 12 braiding her coal-black hair. The faraway look in her eyes lit the fuse to Jude’s quick temper. Agnes should never look so demure, so _extinguished_.

“Do we need to have a talk about you picking up strays?” Jude asked, terse as the wax beneath her feet began to bubble, “or should I be talking _to_ the stray? It seems to be the one pulling the strings around here?”

When the little girl turned to look at her, Jude felt the weight of more than two eyes on her, allies of the creature before her gathering in the corners of the room. Threads of spider’s silk spread through the air around her, thin strands of power weaving into everything they touched.

The girl smiled smugly, but Agnes was the one to answer in a too-hazy voice. “There’s no need to worry. My father only sent Arachne because he wanted to know how I was doing. Why don’t you sit down and join us?”

Power thrummed through the air, tightening strands of web pulling her towards the two.

For the first time in decades, Jude felt her wax mockery of a heart go cold with dread. The Web’s hooks were already in her, woven by Agnes’ clever hands the memorable night before. If only the others could see her now, a monster playing at love. It’d taken too long to find the rot settling into the very marrow of her bones, weakening Jude to the Mother of Puppets’ machinations. She’d had bought into Agnes’ misguided bid for humanity, and it would be both of their downfalls.

The floor beneath her blackened with heat while she was bodily pulled towards the two, as slowly and easily as winding a fishing line.

“You have no power over me,” Jude snapped, though silk-strong threads still bound her.

“Of course I do,” the child said, smug as anything. Jude was reminded of how much she despised the Web and its little minions.

“You may have bound Agnes, but you won’t do the same to me,” she continued, “there are no strings between the two of us to pull on.”

“But you love her, don’t you? That’s what you say at least, when she asks you to lie to her,” the child taunted. And suddenly her voice was Agnes’, soft and intimate as the familiar words fill the room, “I know you feel something for me. Something you shouldn’t. You know what I want to hear, so just say it…even if it’s a lie.”

Jude knew that she missed her chance, the chance to confess her sins before her god (or the closest thing she’s ever touched to divinity). For the first and last time, she lied about her feelings towards agnes.

“I don’t love her.”

She said it with such conviction that she almost believed herself. The webs binding her to the two shriveled into brittle husks, but still they pulled.

Arachne’s eyes glittered with a smug, distinctly insectoid quality, but Agnes? She just sat there, complacent and unmoved and all of the things she should never be. That only stoked Jude’s anger, and with anger came impulsiveness. She wrenched herself free of the webs, feeling something in her chest shift as they loosened, as if a detonation had been put on hold. Something fundamental within her had changed, but she was too angry to care.

“Step away from her. I'm not above burning this building to the ground,” Jude snarled. 

“Oh, you Desolation folks are so hot-headed,” Arachne complained, though it was amused, as if she'd already gotten what the came for. She made some kind of complicated gesture with her hands and the taut strings of power around the room loosened. Agnes went limp, breathing heavily as her soul flared back to life. Arachne kissed her forehead with deceptive gentleness. “Mr. Fielding wanted to let you know that you’ll always have a room at 105 Hilltop Road.” She fixed Jude with a smile. “You’d be welcome to visit her, if you wanted. But why would you? You don’t love h-“ 

“Get out, Spiderling,” Jude spat, “before I remember how much I despise mercy.”

The child moved like she was accustomed to having more than two legs and it turned Jude's stomach to see the strange grace with which she scuttled out the door. As soon as the front door clicked shut, Jude dropped to her knees and enveloped Agnes in her arms. As life and heat slowly filtered back into Agnes, all Jude could do was bury her face into the crook of her shoulder, tell herself that Agnes was still the same person she knew, even as the Web's influence on her grew. She counted the freckles that dotted the expanse of Agnes’ shoulders like burnt out stars, like ashen embers of sunlight, like smoldering coals, like pinpricks of woodsmoke, like countless moments of beautiful destruction. As she counted, she waited for that rush of tight warmth that usually accompanied holding Agnes. 

It never came, not even when Agnes finally, _finally_ returned to herself and fixed Jude with a shaky smile.

Jude didn’t love Agnes, and something about that visceral hurt elated her.


End file.
